Co-ordination exercises and massage can help children with learning difficulties, reports Sylvia Thompson
There is a steady growth in awareness and knowledge that children who suffer from learning difficulties can be helped by a more holistic approach to their problems.
Physical therapists and some practitioners of complementary therapies are now realising that placing an emphasis on gross motor skills (eg synchronised arm and leg movements) and fine motor skills (picking up small objects, pattern-making with a pencil, etc) can lead to improvements in reading, writing, mathematics and overall concentration.
The addition of massage has also been found to help some children be less stressed by their difficulties and thus more able to overcome them.
One practitioner of this approach is physical therapist Katie Losty, who brought techniques from the Axelsons Gymnastic Institute in Stockholm, Sweden to Ireland over five years ago.
"Scientists have discovered that parts of the brain previously thought to be only important for motor skills are now also believed to be important for non-motor cognitive functions such as attention, language development and mental imagery," explains Losty.
"So, by stimulating the nerve pathways between various muscle groups used in physical exercises and the brain, you are also strengthening nerve pathways between the brain and mental processes such as reading, concentrating in class and writing."
The Axelsons techniques are based on a combined programme of physical exercises and massage given to individual children during one-hour sessions over 12 weeks.
While children are doing the jumping exercises, Katie Losty also asks them various questions to strengthen their mental alertness. Such multi-tasking is now believed to stimulate "whole brain" activity (ie using both the left and right hemispheres of the brain) in children.
Following 20 minutes or so of these physical exercises, Losty then gives the child a full body massage with particular attention to the facial muscles and areas around the eyes which is believed to improve visual acuity. She also incorporates deep abdominal breathing and eye tracking exercises into the programme.
Catherine O'Brien brought her son Aaron (10) to Katie Losty after he was diagnosed with mild dyslexia at the age of seven.
"He had poor concentration and often cried with frustration when he was doing his reading homework. The main benefit from the programme was the instant mood change," she says.
"The massage calmed him but he found the exercises difficult to do sometimes [while children are on the Axelsons programme, they are given a series of gross motor and fine motor exercises to do three times a day at home]. I still have to hover over him when he is doing his homework but he's more content and relaxed now."
Martina Shaw also brought her son, Joe (8) who has Aspergers Syndrome, to Katie Losty for a 12-week programme. "He has poor co-ordination skills and has difficulty playing ball, riding a bicycle and writing," she says.
"After the programme, I could see improvement in his writing but I think it was the massage that benefited him the most. I hadn't realised how stressed he was. Also, the massage opened up his sense of touch."
In Sweden, massage or "peaceful touch" as it is called, is incorporated into the curriculum in many schools. "They have found that when children learn to massage each other's backs, it helps reduce violence and aggression in schools and improves the children's concentration," says Losty.
In 2004, Losty asked parents to fill in questionnaires, noting the levels of improvement in their children following 12 weeks of one-hour sessions of the Axelsons programme. From a case load of 77 children, Losty claims more than 80 per cent showed improvement in their concentration levels, reading ability, speaking ability and handwriting. Ninety per cent also experienced more self-confidence and worked more independently.
Massage aside, the incorporation of gross motor and fine motor exercises into programmes to help children with learning difficulties such as dyslexia (reading and writing difficulties), dyspraxia (also known as developmental co-ordination disorder) and dyscalculia (difficulty with mathematics) is slowly being incorporated into more mainstream therapies.
"We now know that up to 50 per cent of children with dyslexia have other co-ordination difficulties as well," says Valerie Cribbin, an occupational therapist working with the Lucena clinic in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
One approach used by occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and physiotherapists is sensory integration therapy. "This involves looking at how our bodies work, understanding the movement and planning activities so that the person can achieve [ tasks] and move on to other activities which helps the central nervous system develop and learn through new motor memories," explains Cribbin.
Ultimately, there is some common ground between the complementary and mainstream approaches and on a much broader level, many teachers are incorporating physical actions into children's songs again because it has been found that the physical activity coupled with the mental activity enhances children's ability to memorise lines.
And, in some ways, much of this work is reminiscent of what children did naturally during traditional games - for instance reciting rhymes while skipping or playing ball games.